Image: tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border with elevator and rail-cart system. Xinhua/REX Shutterstock.

Books

Peter Andreas: Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.

Elaine Carey & Andrae M. Marak: Smugglers, Brothels, and Twine: Historical Perspectives on Contraband and Vice in North America’s Borderlands.

Paul J. Vanderwood: Satan’s Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars at America’s Greatest Gaming Resort.

George T. Diaz: Border Contraband: a History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande.

Articles: Historical

Lynn Burnett: The Origins of Border Crossing and Border Policing.

Brian DeLay: 19th Century Lessons for Today’s Drug War Policies.

George T. Diaz:

• What’s the History of Smuggling Along the U.S.-Mexico Border?
• Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande.

Kevan Malone: How U.S. Prohibition transformed Tijuana and the border.

Articles: Contemporary

Adam Goodman: How the Mexican Drug Trade Thrives on Free Trade: While President Peña Nieto celebrates the Aztec Tiger, Mexico’s cartels reach deeper into the legal economy.

Yaatsil Guevara González: Smuggling as social negotiation: pathways of Central American migrants in Mexico.

Seth Harp:Arming the Cartels: The Inside Story of a Texas Gun-Smuggling Ring:  Selling weapons south of the border is big business — and America’s loose gun laws are also devastating for Mexico.

Human smugglers roundtable:

• With Soledad Alvarez Velasco.
• With Luigi Achilli.
• With Yaatsil Guevara González, in 2016 and again in 2017. 

Mario Koran: Tunnel discovered on US-Mexico border is longest ever, authorities say: Sophisticated passageway includes an extensive rail-cart system, a drainage system and an elevator.

German Lopez: Where do Mexican drug cartels get their guns? The US.

Daniel E. Martínez & Jeremy Slack: What makes a good coyote? Mexican Migrants’ satisfaction with human smugglers.

Martha Ruiz & Soledad Alvarez Velasco: Beyond common-sense notions of human smuggling in the Americas.

Kevin Sieff: The child migrant smugglers of Northern Mexico.